The 8 best-dressed men of the week

Bar of the week: Clean Air Bar with Ketel One vodka

Every week, we scour the city to find the best bars our capital has to offer. Whether you're a cocktail kind of guy, or a man who enjoys a decent draft beer, there's a GQ-worthy drinking spot to suit every taste.

The 8 best-dressed men of the week

Bar of the week: Clean Air Bar with Ketel One vodka

Every week, we scour the city to find the best bars our capital has to offer. Whether you're a cocktail kind of guy, or a man who enjoys a decent draft beer, there's a GQ-worthy drinking spot to suit every taste.

Ally Heath works in advertising as a Planner, and in his spare time drinks too much petrol

Monday 20 June 2016

It is a known fact in the universe that blue flames bursting from exhausts are as effective a stimulant as viagra, and when those exhausts are somewhere different, like those stunning over-the-top pipes on the Porsche 918 Spyder, or on the side exhausts of the Aston Martin Vulcan we saw this week on Top Gear, it’s like having a quadruple espresso chaser. What a fantastically mad machine! It was a great film and Chris Harris was the brilliantly enthusiastic man at the helm. That’s what we wanted. And it’s reaffirming that Chris Harris is the true highlight of this form of Top Gear. Knowledge, plus passion, is a recipe for success.

But when you open with your best hand, it’s very easy for everything that follows to feel pale in comparison. Especially when you return to a studio filled with “oohs” and “ahhs”. It’s such a pantomime atmosphere, it’s hard to work out what you’re watching. Is this Saturday morning kids TV? I half expect them to bring in a "gunge tank" and have Mr Blobby or a teletubby play some part. And I didn’t tune in for that – I tuned in for an Aston Martin and a Tesla.

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That's a small benefit of losing the old guard of Top Gear: back in 2011, a man by the name of Jeremy Clarkson, was entertaining the Tesla Roadster on the Top Gear track – the debutant from the American electric car firm, it was essentially a Lotus Elise stuffed with some laptop batteries. And it ran out of juice. Took forever to charge. So they used a spare one. Ran out again. And then Elon Musk, a relative unknown at the time, sued them – accusing Top Gear of deliberately manipulating the scenario to ensure the car would run out of electric power.

But now, we have a new team at Top Gear. And so Elon Musk, our very own real world Tony Stark, can happily work with the world’s best known car program. And thank goodness, because the Tesla Model X is a true symbol of progress. Along with its forefather, the Tesla Model S, and the upcoming Model 3, they have a great place in the future of motoring.

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When announcing the Model S P85D, the first four wheel drive Tesla, Elon Musk said for speed off the line he benchmarked the McLaren F1. For an electric car, that sounded utterly crazy. But this was no milkfloat. Dig a little deeper and you find out Elon Musk owned a McLaren F1, so he’s pretty well qualified to make those claims.

That’s the two good films covered. The rest, is best left untouched, with the sentiment “if you can’t say something nice, say nothing at all”. But, seriously, why would we care about a race when the competing teams don’t even start at the same time, or even in the same country?!